


You must be somewhere in the stars

by aboutbunnies



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Star Wars: The Force Awakens Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-22
Updated: 2015-12-22
Packaged: 2018-05-08 11:58:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5496221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aboutbunnies/pseuds/aboutbunnies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Please do not read this if you have not yet seen The Force Awakens! Major spoilers within.</p><p> </p><p> Leia in TFA: <i>A great disturbance in the Force, Luke had told her Obi-Wan had felt after Alderaan. And this is not the same as an entire planet's destruction, but Leia still feels her entire world careen off its axis, just as she had then, so many lifetimes ago.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	You must be somewhere in the stars

She steps off the transport behind her troops, and finds his eyes first.

She's not surprised.

Though Han is certainly not Force-sensitive, they have long had a connection; she's always been able to feel when he's near. She doesn't understand how the Force works, and has never wanted to learn, though Luke has tried to explain it to her time and again. Their connection has never been like hers with her brother. She cannot feel Han's emotions, nor can she sense his thoughts (thank the gods, she thinks). Han's existence is simply a _part_ of her; throughout the years and over all their separations, she has always known he _is_.

So, she is unsurprised to see him standing there, as the crowd parts and they find each other's gaze.

She is also not surprised to see his hair a shock of white, deeper wrinkles and lines crossing his face, to hear his voice is even more gravelly than she remembers. After all, she feels so, _so_ old these days.

He is still so beautiful to her. (She almost hates him for that.) The scoundrel-smirk on his face is there, as always, though time-softened and worn.

“You changed your hair,” he says, as if that's all that's changed in her. In them.

And she, “Same jacket.” Because some things never change.

He calls her on that one, almost immediately. And she feels the difference later, when he holds her against him. This new jacket is rougher under her cheek, the leather smells slightly different, the folds crease sharper against her skin. But his heart still beats the same rhythm against her ear.

She _feels_ him, just as she always has.

\-----

It shudders through her, the moment their son takes Han's life.

( _A great disturbance in the Force,_ Luke had told her Obi-Wan had felt after Alderaan. And this is not the same as an entire planet's destruction, but Leia still feels her entire world careen off its axis, just as she had then, so many lifetimes ago.)

Han is just...gone. She sinks slowly to a seat. His presence is erased from her consciousness and she _knows._

“Ben,” she whispers, or maybe it's just in her mind. She feels her son, still. Seconds earlier, she'd felt his conflict. The Light wavering, fighting for purchase. Now, she only feels his Dark.

She loses them both in that moment.

Her arms ache just then, her ribs compress, and somehow she knows she's feeling the weight of Ben, when Han had first placed him at her breast, red and bloody and squalling just minutes after his birth. And her ears ring, too, and she's hearing his delighted toddler-squeals as his father chases him around the _Falcon_ , in a game only they understand. Leia clutches her arms around herself and longs to press her ears closed so she's protected against the echoes.

There is nothing where Han used to be. She'd become so accustomed to feeling him, even in his absences, that she reels from the shock.

\-----

After she leads the mission debrief, after she makes sure their new ally Finn and the other injured are given the medical attention they need, after she sees to it the girl gets food and a place to rest for the night, she goes to find Chewie.

She hasn't been on the _Falcon_ in decades but, to her surprise, her palm still activates the lock mechanism so she enters without announcing herself. He doesn't even bark a warning at her uninvited presence and her heart shatters a little more at that.

She finds him in the cockpit and he doesn't look surprised to see her. He doesn't actually look at her at all. Instead, he motions silently to the pilot's seat, but she shakes her head. She can't. She joins him on the copilot's chair instead, and she buries her face in his fur. She feels his body tremble, or maybe it's hers.

[I'm sorry,] he rumbles softly.

“No, Chewie,” she begins, but he interrupts.

[It was my duty to protect Cub. To help him protect _his_ cub. I failed.]

She's silent for a few long moments. How tempting it is to stay here, to say nothing, to allow another being to carry her guilt. But then –

“I told him – I asked him. If he saw our son, to bring him home. I knew if I asked, he would try.”

She doesn't say _I'm sorry_ , not aloud. Chewie barks something else but she doesn't understand; she only hears it as grief. She tightens her arms around his frame, just as she had on Bespin. When he howls, she cries with him.

\-----

The girl finds her again, in the empty war room, in the middle of the night when the rest of the base is attempting sleep. Leia feels her presence and turns; the girl immediately straightens, pulls herself taller. “General Organa.”

(Leia had felt the girl's sorrow as soon as Rey had stepped off the _Falcon_ behind Chewie. The strength of it had surprised Leia, how she could feel it thrumming through the Force. So she'd embraced the girl, attempting in her clumsy, untrained way to communicate calm, soothing, understanding. She was the General, after all, and despite her own sorrow she felt mirrored in the girl she held, she could not allow herself the luxury of giving into her grief.)

Now, Leia smiles slightly at the girl's formality. “Leia. Please.” In her tone, she attempts to communicate the same soothing she'd tried through their embrace earlier, because she can still feel Rey's sorrow and confusion reaching towards her through the Force, and she's trying desperately to hold her own at bay.

“Leia,” the girl agrees and sits down within reach of the General, her back still ramrod-straight. “I wanted to say I'm sorry. That we couldn't – I couldn't – do anything. To save him.”

“No,” Leia shakes her head, places a hand over the girl's. “You couldn't have done anything. It was the Dark Side. There was nothing you could have done.”

Rey nods, but Leia can feel her confusion, still. “He didn't call... _him_...Kylo Ren.”

Leia closes her eyes and reaches out with the Force, searching. Finally she feels him, faintly. Anger, resentment, jealousy. Darkness. _Kylo Ren._ The name her son has chosen for himself, looming to swallow the one she and his father had given him.

“Ben,” she finally says, as if speaking it aloud will mean it did happen, that her pure, sweet boy really had once existed. “We named our son Ben, after an old friend. After someone who sacrificed himself for us, who was destroyed by the Dark Side.” _What a birthright. She should have known._

She feels the understanding – the shock – course through Rey, and Leia opens her eyes to smile kindly at her. “Han knew what he was doing when he went there. There was nothing you could have done.” She doesn't admit her own guilt to the girl as she'd done with Chewie. The words can't make it past her lips a second time.

It's a long, silent while before Rey speaks again, this time her voice a bit stronger, awe in her tone along with the sorrow and longing. “He was a legend, you know. Every scavenger and pilot on Jakku knows the stories. About the smuggler, Han Solo. The Wookiee and the _Millennium Falcon_. I didn't even know he was a general with the Rebellion. It was all about his piloting.”

Leia is brought out of her reverie and hides a smile behind a hand. Even in his later years, the girls all developed crushes on Han Solo. And Han, of course, had never been one to discourage a little hero worship. “He would have loved that,” she admits, fondly, if a little begrudgingly. _Scoundrel._

“The _Falcon_ – I couldn't believe that was actually the _Falcon_ ,” the girl continues, motioning to the ship grounded just outside. “It's the ship that made the Kessel Run in --”

“In less than twelve parsecs,” Leia manages a laugh at that, though it hurts. “I _know_! Oh, gods, do I know.” She inclines her head in Rey's direction. “I hear you're not too bad at piloting her yourself.”

“He offered me a job,” Rey tells her, and Leia feels, rather than hears, the swell of satisfaction – and regret – that comes with that admission.

“He must have trusted you,” Leia says, but then she stands; the swirling emotions she's feeling from Rey, coupled with her own, are getting too dangerously close to the surface, and though she'd cried with Chewie, she's vowed that will be the last time. There is still too much to be done. There will be time enough for grieving later.

She pauses at the door. “I think we can make good on his offer of a job,” she tells the girl.

Rey straightens again, almost at attention. “I won't let him...I won't let you down.”

 -----

Outside, Leia allows herself to tremble, and she breathes deeply. She looks up at the stars.

She whispers, “I love you. I always loved you.”

She reaches out with the Force, forgetting momentarily that she won't feel him anymore.

But she hears it, still, and whether it's him, or the Force, or merely an echo, a hope – it doesn't even matter:

“I know.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first attempt at writing Star Wars fanfiction, and my first attempt at writing anything at all in 4 or so years. Yikes!
> 
> The title is from Rosanne Cash's _[The World Unseen](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pul_BqeNTDU)_. (Give it a listen and get ready to feel all the feels.)
> 
> This fic can also be read on [my tumblr](http://about-bunnies.tumblr.com/post/135747825877/you-must-be-somewhere-in-the-stars-leia-x-han-tfa).


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